The Royal Navy’s first full scale uncrewed helicopter has moved closer to flight after completing engine, systems and rotor tests at Leonardo’s Yeovil site.
The aircraft, known as Proteus, is the size of a conventional helicopter but operated through remote tasking rather than direct piloting.
Leonardo developed the technology demonstrator in under two and a half years under a sixty million pound programme. Defence views it as one of the earliest attempts to field a medium lift autonomous vertical take off and landing aircraft. The aim is to understand how uncrewed platforms of this scale should be designed and how they could operate alone or with crewed aircraft in a future hybrid air wing.
Senior officers and Ministry of Defence specialists attended the ground running event and were briefed on the software, sensors and artificial intelligence functions that underpin the aircraft. Captain David Gillett, who leads maritime aviation and carrier strike development for the Navy, said the programme reflects close cooperation across defence.
“It’s been a huge pleasure to work with Leonardo and across defence, as one team, to deliver Proteus,” he said. “It combines cutting edge technology and the experience of recent conflicts and has significant potential to shape the Navy’s future hybrid air wing.”
Leonardo’s UK helicopters managing director Nigel Colman said the firm is pushing the boundaries of autonomy and highlighted the aircraft’s maritime design parameters. “Proteus is equipped with advanced onboard software, carrying sensors and systems that allow it to sense its environment, make decisions and act accordingly,” he said. “All of this processing is conducted onboard the aircraft, including in high sea states and strong winds.”
The demonstrator can carry around one tonne of payload and is being positioned as a flexible platform for surveillance, logistics resupply, intelligence tasks or weapon carriage. Its initial assessment focuses on anti submarine warfare. Proteus will be assigned patrol areas and integrate information from ships, submarines, aircraft and fixed sensors to improve detection performance. It will deploy sonobuoys, analyse acoustic signatures and pass findings to a mission commander.
While Proteus is not flown by a pilot, an operator always controls the system within approved safety limits and the rules of engagement.
Good news.
Now let’s hope that Leonardo then transfer over into a productionised helicopter rather than just focussing on the autonomy software, as they were suggesting/threatening at DSEI. It sounded at the time like they didn’t even want to do a prototype and instead wanted to do everything with Digital Twins.
why not invest in the VSR700 instead? it’s already been trialed and tested
An exciting time and just the beginning!